ROBESPIERRE

order to augment the quantity, the quality of the bread
was such as to make it almost unfit for human consump-
tion. The royalist Montjoie gives the following descrip-
tion of the poor man's principal article of diet at that
time: "The bread was blackish, of an earthy taste,
bitter, and causing inflammation of the throat and dis-
orders of the bowels. I have seen some of a yellowish
colour that gave forth a putrid odour and was so hard
that it took repeated blows of an axe to detach a
morsel."

Under these circumstances, what more natural than
that great unrest should have prevailed among the
masses, which were otherwise docile enough? Thus,
owing to the fact that the economic crisis coincided
with the financial and political crisis, the Third
Estate, when it undertook its campaign against the
court and the nobility, found the support which en-
abled it to carry out its programme. But when that
programme had been realized, there still remained an
economic crisis to deal with, for in the meantime war
had broken out, the assignats had fallen and prices had
soared far beyond the rise in wages. In some parts of
France a day's wage would hardly buy a pound of
bread. So the middle class, in its turn, became the
object of attack and was forced to give ground. The
government fell into the hands of a group of men—of
whom Robespierre was the principal one—who sub-
ordinated the interests of the rich to those of the poor,
and whose avowed purpose it was to make the poor
richer, and the rich poorer. On the 9th of Thermidor
the middle class struck back, and that date marks not
only the fall of Robespierre, but the end of the first
important experiment in modern history to rule a State
primarily in the interest of human beings and with
scant regard for the rights of property.

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